Social workers are now resorting to lying on official forms in an effort to
help elderly people get the care they believe they need, a new study shows.

At least one in four specialists who carry out formal assessments of people’s needs privately admit to deliberately exaggerating how frail they are in order to get around increasingly tight criteria for care, it found.

But at the same time a similar proportion claim they have under pressure from above to effectively falsify the assessments by playing down people’s needs to reduce the number of people qualifying for care.

Age UK and the College of Social Work, who jointly conducted the research, said it was a dramatic indictment of the crisis the care system is in that social workers now feel they have to “fiddle” the system just to get people the care they need.

It comes after figures showed that the total number of older people receiving social care in England has dropped by almost a fifth in the last four years despite a surge in the number people over retirement age.

Councils have seen their total budgets slashed by almost a third since 2010 and are braced for another major tranche of cuts when the Chancellor George Osborne unveils his spending review this week.

Although local authorities have attempted to shield care for the elderly and disabled from the brunt of the cuts and focussed on so-called “efficiencies” rather than closures, spending on social care has already been trimmed by £2.7 billion.

One method used to rein in spending on care has been for most councils to raise the threshold above which people need to be to qualify for care to a higher level.

That has led to complaints of a postcode lottery, something the Government’s current care reforms set out to address - but potentially only by raising the threshold across the board meaning that even fewer people might qualify.

The research found that eight out of 10 social workers responsible for assessments said that elderly people whose needs have not changed in the last four years now get less support than they did.

To thirds said they had seen elderly people on their books being admitted to hospital more frequently, suggesting that many are now turning up at A&E for matters which might have been treated more effectively through social care.

Meanwhile nine out of 10 of them said they believe life will get increasingly difficult for older people.

In total 26 per cent of those polled said they had already begun exaggerating how frail people are in order to get them over the bar for care.

Michelle Mitchell, director general of Age UK said: “Older people at a vulnerable time in their lives deserve a system that not only meets their care needs but does so in a transparent and accountable way.

“It is bad enough that many social workers feel the only way to get people the care they clearly need is to fiddle the system, however it is truly shocking that frontline professionals should be put under pressure to deny care to vulnerable older people when they are clear they need it.

“The Government has a choice – to find sufficient funds to ensure that every older person receives the care they need both now and in the future, or to allow the system to sink further towards collapse, failing our country’s older people.”

Bernard Walker, chair of The College of Social Work Adults Faculty, said: "Social workers are doing as much as they can to secure essential care and support services necessary to enable older people to live with dignity and in comfort in their own homes and communities.

“But they are alerting us to many incidents where even the very basic levels of care are either no longer available to many people or are being withdrawn altogether.

“As well as causing unnecessary suffering to many frail and lonely older people this situation is causing their care needs to escalate more quickly, increasing the burden on higher cost care services provided by the NHS.”